We are the victim of our own success. :-)
If we do our job, there will be no SI problem in our designs. If there is no SI
problem in our designs, management will start to question why do they need us.
Fortunately most of my bosses had near death experiences with SI problems. They
kept us as insurance policies against another experience.
Chris Cheng
Distinguished Technologist , Electrical
Hewlett-Packard Company
-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Todd Westerhoff
Sent: Monday, August 10, 2015 6:09 AM
To: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: commodity
All,
Lots of great comments on this thread last week. I'd like to offer a comment
for your consideration.
The concept of "commodity" is based on a fundamental assumption, one that is
commonly overlooked. As Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity)
puts it:
"The term commodity is specifically used for an economic good or service when
the demand for it has no qualitative differentiation across a market."
Personally - I would tweak that a bit, to emphasize that the good or service
being offered either has no significant differentiation itself, or is perceived
to have no appreciable differentiation.
I share the frustration with design managers treating SI analysis as a
commodity, because they perceive that all SI analysis is the same. This is
human nature - we all seek ways to simplify our interactions with things we
don't understand. I'm guessing we've all heard a project manager say "we need
to get some SI here", as though that actually meant something.
My point - one way to deal with this is to challenge the assumption that all SI
analysis is the same. For instance - what's the goal of SI analysis? To produce
pretty plots that no one understands, or to produce concrete routing guidelines
for CAD along with expected voltage and timing margins? And - as obvious as the
answer to that question might seem, how often have you seen slide decks passed
around that represented the former and not the latter?
Personally, I think inter-personal communication is the most undervalued
engineering skill going. As engineers, we all know about operating on
assumptions - but how much do we know about the assumptions our peers and
managers make about SI analysis? Probably not a whole lot. Thus, why should we
be surprised when people seek to commoditize our efforts? That's just human
nature at work - there used to be only a few people who understood SI, now
there are a whole bunch, so the work should be standardized by now, right?
The winning moment, for me, has been when I was able to get the organizations
I've worked for to differentiate between "SI" and "SI done right" - meaning,
analysis that considered the unique requirements of the products we were
designing and the needs of the design teams I was supporting. I've found that
when I can (specifically and meaningfully) enumerate what "SI done right" means
and get the project team to adopt that as a catchphrase, my life gets a lot
better.
I hope that made some sense.
Todd.
Todd Westerhoff
VP, Semiconductor Relations
Signal Integrity Software Inc. • www.sisoft.com
6 Clock Tower Place • Suite 250 • Maynard, MA 01754
(978) 461-0449 x124 • twesterh@xxxxxxxxxx
“I want to live like that”
-Sidewalk Prophets
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